Baking trout in the oven is genius — especially when you do it in foil packets. With our recipe, dinner will be on the table in 20 minutes. You can’t beat that.

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How to Make Oven Baked Trout in 20 Minutes

It’s easy to find trout that is already cleaned and butterflied. By butterflied I mean that the fish is opened up down the middle, but still has the halves attached.

Buying the trout butterflied allows us to add a few fresh ingredients to the middle. In our recipe below, we add lemon slices and fresh herbs. You can also add thinly sliced garlic, onion, or greens (like spinach). For the packets, we use heavy duty foil. Parchment paper works, too.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Oven Baked Salmon with Lemon is a simple recipe. Season salmon fillets with salt and pepper and bake on top of lemon slices and fresh dill.

The trout bakes in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Then when you’re ready to serve, you can slide the trout onto a plate and drizzle any juices leftover from cooking over the fish.

By the way, if you watch our video above, we show you how to fillet your trout once it has finished baking. It’s really easy — and I think, much easier than when the fish is raw.

Easy 20 Minute Oven Baked Trout Recipe

PREP 5mins

COOK 15mins

TOTAL 20mins

Baking rainbow trout in foil packets helps the fish cook perfectly. While they bake, juices form at the bottom of the packet. This is delicious when spooned over the cooked trout when serving. Other ingredients to consider adding to the middle of the fish are thinly sliced garlic, onion, or greens (like spinach).

Makes 2 Servings

You Will Need

Olive oil

2 small rainbow trout, cleaned and butterflied (opened up with the halves still attached), about 1 pound

1 lemon, sliced

4 fresh parsley or dill sprigs

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Prepare Fish

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut two sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil that are larger than your fish.

Place trout, skin side down, on each piece of foil. Lightly oil both sides with oil. Season both sides, inside and out, with salt and pepper. Place two parsley (or dill) sprigs and two lemon slices down the middle of each fish. Fold up the foil by grabbing at the edges and crimping together to make a packet.

Bake Fish

Place packets of fish onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, checking one packet after 10 minutes. The flesh should pull apart easily with a fork.

Place each packet on a plate. Carefully open the foil packets — take care not to let the steam burn you. Slide the fish away from the packet and onto the plate and pour juices over it. Serve with more fresh herbs and lemon slices.

Adam and Joanne's Tips

If you do not have heavy duty foil, use two sheets of regular foil to make each packet.

How to Make Grilled Trout: Follow the directions in the recipe above to make each packet. Heat grill to medium-high heat. Place the packets over indirect heat. Grill 10 to 15 minutes, or until cooked through.

Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA Supertracker recipe calculator to calculate approximate values.

If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste

I season/stuffing it outside and inside. Wrap tightly in heavy duty foil. 1′ is about 10-15 minutes on each side. Start with folded foil side down first and then flip. Cook longer if necessary. If your worried about the driping of fish oil/butter/etc., put a pan or foil or something underneath the foiled fish to catch the drippings.

What perfect timing. A new fish store opened in our area and we stopped in to see what they have. He showed us some fresh trout. He cleaned it (inside and out) and butterflied it for us. I had no idea what to do with them. Found your recipe and walla…..they are now in he oven with 13 minutes to go. Can’t wait to taste it.Looks great! Real gourmet and so simple to make.Thanks so much.I added a sprinkling of dill in and out of the fish.

My boyfriend fishes all the time. We have a freezer full of trout. Of course it is cleaned but he did not bother to cut the fillets out. This is how he usually cooks it too. It is very good but the beauty is you can also add a lot of other seasonings to it. Found one today where they suggested bay leaves and another where it was stuffed inside with onions and carrots and garlic. Think if you keep it fresh, the flavors on the brighter side, the better off you are. Hope you will try more Trout. Thanks for the recipe, I printed for my book since he never wrote his down. Now you get the credit. LOL

Adam and Joanne, The trout sounds great, and surprisingly simple to make 🙂 Maybe one day I will try to make one of these recipes, but in the meantime, when are you making this for me!P.S. I am not surprised you didn’t want to clean the fish haha. That was a great tip though about asking the person behind the seafood counter to clean it for us. Looking forward to your next post !–Ryan

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